Boosting Frontend Masters (and Their Workshops Are Rad)

Published January 22, 2024

2024-01-23: Brief update, Chris Coyier noted that the typical budget for Boost contributions is $300 USD: https://github.com/philipkiely/whopaystechnicalwriters/issues/176#issuecomment-1905170072

I started learning programming a bit over a decade ago towards the end of high school. The first ever software I wrote was with Macromedia Director MX—this was pre-acquisition by Adobe. I quickly realized I liked the near-instant feedback loop of doing software that had a UI, so I quickly started picking up frontend web development too.

Through this process I was trying to become part sponge and soak up as much information as I could. I would frequently spend time on Codecademy free courses and reading up on CSS-Tricks articles. Early on in this process, likely through the CSS-Tricks articles or CodePen (hi Chris Coyier I’m a huge fan) podcasts I became aware of Frontend Masters as another resource for learning all things web development. This was back in the days when CodePen Pro offered perks to adjacent things e.g. discounts on Frontend Masters.

A great recent happening is Chris Coyier writing for Frontend Masters’ new publication Boost: https://chriscoyier.net/2024/01/02/boost/. I think this is a great collaboration: after CSS-Tricks was acquired I’ve felt there’s been a bit of a void in terms of content and Chris also mentions that Frontend Masters had a non-zero amount of traffic coming from their CSS-Tricks sponsorships so starting a grassroots publication in-house is a great way to move forward. They have a page on guest writing that I’ve submitted to Philip Kiely’s whopaystechnicalwriters.com website, which you can track on GitHub: https://github.com/philipkiely/whopaystechnicalwriters/issues/176. The only thing they don’t have listed currently is the amount paid out to authors—I’m guessing the page is a relatively recent addition so they’re still figuring out what a reasonable budget1 is.

Now fast forward 10+ years and I’ve lived in Minneapolis for closing in on 5 years now and literally only a couple months ago I found out Frontend Masters is headquartered right here. And what’s even cooler is they have a small (< 10 humans) studio audience for when they record (and livestream) their workshops and it’s totally free to attend. You can read more on their website: https://frontendmasters.com/welcome/in-person/.

I was laid off right before Thanksgiving and EOY is a notably quiet time, especially when trying to find a new role, so I found myself with loads of spare time and was able to leverage that by attending (4) Frontend Masters workshops:

My intention is create another blog post shortly that outlines the notes and takeaways I had from the workshops. In particular, I learned a lot about accessibility (a11y) because previously I’ve researched standards and techniques on an ad-hoc basis so I never really learned “end-to-end” so to speak. Expect that post soon, likely as a #draft.

  1. Personally I’d expect in the $250–400 USD range per contribution.↩︎

Last modified January 23, 2024  #words   #writing   #frontend   #learning 

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